The AACM is an organisation that truly never stops giving. Founded in Chicago in 1965, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians has helped many notable musicians on their creative way, but strangely, two of its earliest and most eminent members, Wadada Leo Smith and Amina Claudine Myers, have never recorded together until now. The admiration and respect they have for each other is clear, the lesson they have learned is that good things, such as this album, take time.
Parks are often oases of calm in turbulent cities, none more so than Central Park, located in the heart of Manhattan, New York. Hence the considered quality and slowness of this music, giving it weight and stature. There is no rush, so let’s us gaze in awe at the natural splendour before us.
The pieces all bar one by Smith, Myers’s opening notes on Conservatory Gardens introducing a series of elegant, sometimes elegiac episodes that allow the proceedings to gain weight. The chords sit in space and slowly circle each other, quietly. Myers’s solo When Was is the perfect centrepiece, reverential and spiritual but also friendly and welcoming. For there is also buoyancy and light here, provided by Smith’s flashlight trumpet illuminating the scene.
On the two concluding tributes, to Albert Ayler and local resident John Lennon, Smith honours in eloquent tones their devotion to peace, their advocacy of social justice by peaceful means. As buoyant and light, and heavy and deep, as this music is, it is above all rich in history and meaning.
Discography
Conservatory Gardens; Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir; Central Park At Sunset; When Was; The Harlem Meer; Albert Ayler, A Meditation In Light; Imagine, A Mosaic For John Lennon (36.31)
Smith (t); Myers (p, org). NYC, 8–9 November 2021.
Red Hook Records RH1005
